Two Ex-officers Granted Mistrial

April 6, 1989|By LARRY KELLER, Staff Writer

The trial of two former Pompano Beach police officers on sexual misconduct charges was halted by a judge on Wednesday after a third officer testified that one of the defendants said he had sex with a drunken woman detained at the city jail.

Broward Circuit Judge Russell E. Seay Jr. agreed to defense attorneys` request for a mistrial after Pompano Beach Officer Richard D`Agostino testified that defendant Robert Rudock told him in graphic terms that he had sex with the woman.

Defense attorneys David Raben and Elinor Wilkov asked for a mistrial because D`Agostino`s account of what Rudock told him was far more graphic and specific than what he had related in two earlier sworn statements.

``We are so surprised and so ambushed,`` Raben said.

Jury selection will begin today for a new trial.

Rudock, 34, and co-defendant Michael Oliveri, 26, were fired from the Pompano Beach Police Department in November 1987 after an internal affairs investigation into the sexual misconduct charges.

Both defendants are charged with armed kidnapping and armed sexual assault, and Oliveri also is charged with unlawful compensation.

Before the mistrial was declared, Assistant State Attorney Shari Stone told jurors that Oliveri, a jailer, photographed women nude or seminude when they were booked, after promising them an early release from jail if they did so.

And with Oliveri`s complicity, Rudock took a woman from the jail`s detoxification cell in July 1987 to a motel where he had sex with her, Stone said.

Because the woman was drunk, she was physically unable to resist the assault, Stone said.

In a deposition last September, D`Agostino said that Rudock told him he had taken the woman to the motel and ``had a good time.`` When pressed by an attorney as to whether Rudock had said anything else, D`Agostino replied, ``No, not that I can recall.``

Raben and Wilkov also complained on Wednesday about another comment made by D`Agostino when he testified that Rudock told him that Oliveri had an album full of nude or seminude pictures of women he had photographed at the jail.

This also was not mentioned by D`Agostino in earlier statements, they said.

D`Agostino testified that he told Oliveri to ``knock it off`` when he saw him photographing the woman who was later taken to the motel.

A couple of hours later, D`Agostino said the woman was no longer at the jail, and Oliveri told him her mother had picked her up. The woman`s mother was living in Colorado at the time, Stone said.

Raben and Wilcov made it clear in their arguments when the trial began earlier on Wednesday that they intended to attack the character and credibility of the victim of the motel room assault. Both sides say she is an alcoholic.

Wilcov, who represents Rudock, said the woman had three husbands and one common-law husband by age 26 and lived in ``eight places with five different men.``

She suggested the woman is claiming she was photographed nude and assaulted in a motel because she hopes to collect money from the city of Pompano Beach in a civil lawsuit.

``She`s going to walk through these doors looking like she`s going to a job application at Disney World,`` Raben said. ``But folks, this is no Snow White.``

Raben said the woman initiated the sexual poses in the booking room. But Stone said drunks who are jailed for their own safety are not supposed to be fingerprinted or photographed at the jail.